Good Example Of Cross Cultural Management Case Study

Undergraduate Course – Business

SICLI is a private security service company formed in 1924 by Charles Sachs. The business, through its operating companies, provide the required regulatory specialist services to the public and private sector corporations. From its inception in 1970, it was run as a family business through management of the founder’s son and the grandson. The company entered the stock exchange market in 1960 and 1974. They later expanded to the European market (Germany) and United States In 1985. This paper will examine the challenges the organization is likely to face as it engages in overseas expansion of locations, the key challenges in forming multicultural teams, different theories, and cross-cultural management approaches. The high-tech and sophisticated nature SICLI operations mean that its employees are required to work in teams. In this case, the CEO should take into consideration the national culture, corporate culture of the organization, functional culture of the organization, stage of team development, and personality attributes. Research and theoretical construct established on how national cultures affect team behavior (Abbe, Gulick, and Herman 2007). The authors argued that national culture has several dimensions that influence team dynamics. Notably, this includes orientation to time, personal space, communication style, worldview, and competitiveness. Zweifel (2003, p.15) established that stereotypes and cultural biases on each country’s perspective affect cross- cultural teams. As a result, the CEO should also consider various character traits to form in the multicultural teams. According to Yamazaki and Kayes (2004) held that in many occasions, the personal attributes of an individual may influence a team to malfunction greater than the national culture traits outlined. In practical life, a German member may be hopeless with deadlines or one personality may drag performance of the teams due to personal attributes. Corporate culture resembles established norms in a particular organization. These norms date back to the founder’s marks. Consequently, the CEO must pass the message of SICLI to all the team members, and give them a brief history of different milestone and factors that attributed to the success of the company. The stage of team development will also influence the functions and roles of each team member (Brodbeck et al. 2000, p.5). Teams without experience to one another have to learn the game together. Personal attributes are also critical when forming multicultural teams. Casimir et al. (2006) cited that the key attributes to be looked at here refers to personality, competence profile, individual own experience as well as previous history of working with a team. Superior sustainable teamwork requires management to consider; national culture, orientation to time, personal space, competitiveness, style of communication and worldview of the members. Working in Germany may offer challenges to a first-time foreigner in that land. It may take some time before any foreigner may adapt to German attitude to work. The culture established people don’t work for long hours in many offices and their day ends at 4 pm (Brodbeck et al. 2000, p.5). However, the good part of them, they emphasize on efficiency that means people tend to be productive and no time for socializing or chatting during working hours. There also have a break of 15 minutes and 45 minutes for lunch. Management culture may offer a challenge to a new entrant. It is highly hierarchical. Germans like to work on scheduled plans. The meetings orderly and punctuality strictly observed. So for people from countries who are not time conscious it may take time before you accept their culture to work. In United States the culture established according to 2004 report from Bureau of Labor Statistics, majority of the American work on shifts basis, long hours (Abbe, Gulick, and Herman 2007). The work for long hours characterized by health and safety issues. New entrants from relaxed nations may take time and feel demoralized with such work schedules. The process of formation of cross-border teams comes with it own challenges. However, such teams can enhance operational efficiency; pull resources together if well constituted. Cultural diversity of team members is creating a longer learning curve. Before the groups become homogenous, conflict may increase, and the teams continue to become demographically diverse as opposed to homogenous groups. Managers more often face hard tasks of how to access and utilize the strengths of each team members at the same time reducing coordination challenges. The differences may range from communication problems, varying work styles, language differences and misunderstanding that may lead to conflicts. To be able to understand challenges facing multicultural teams, we shall examine the effects of individual teams members on group process. Research findings support the view that compositional heterogeneity is both positive and negative in a successful group formation. Abbe, Gulick, and Herman (2007) asserted that heterogeneity associated with a wide range of experience in solving work-related problems. On another perspective the view is heterogeneity hinders effective group formation; it associated with conflicts, misunderstanding, and communication challenges. Different cultural orientations reflect different levels of tolerance for uncertainty, confrontation in terms of conflicts and corporation. For those who come from individualistic and low-context cultures they like a direct approach to conflict confrontation while those from collectivist prefer the indirect approach to solving conflicts. Sometimes effective team building may result in deeper cross-cultural relationships that are fuelling cross-cultural marriages. According to team roles theory, each team needs to have specific roles (Gelfand, Erez, and Aycan 2007). The roles can be functional, personal, and organizational. To create harmony, teams should comprise members with different abilities that complement each other and being together in terms of goals and organizational objectives Leadership is the process of social influence where you use the support of others to accomplish a given tasks (Hechanova, Beehr, and Christiansen 2003). Different approaches to leadership do exist like democratic style, dictatorial, charismatic and transformational leadership. Researchers have established that there are culturally contingent attributes that can assist or hinder leadership across borders. Whatever considered as a weakness in one culture, another culture may approve of it as a strength In the global business environment, each business must develop its culture shaped from the top executives. According to Hofstede and Hofstede (2005) leaders need to acknowledge and appreciate their cultural settings. Regardless of culture, leaders need to learn first the culture of the business and how the employee understands and perceive leadership in that given settings (House et al. 2004, pp.5-8). It calls for current executives with a mindset of offering leadership for multicultural businesses to develop bespoke leadership attributes that fit the unique culture he or she works. It means even if the leader is a charismatic he must be willing and seek to develop transformative style if the culture in that organization accepts that. Globe found out those managerial practices; motivational techniques in one country may be not work in another. The organization culture should dictate the style of leadership. No style is superior and better but it all depends on the ascribes norms and beliefs established in a setup (House, Javidan, and Dorfman 2001, p.500). Leaders are expected to have a vision; however, how the vision displayed will differ from culture to culture. Effective communication skills needed for leadership, however, what constitutes to effective communication skills will vary from culture to culture and may not be the same. Therefore, multicultural team leadership requires very distinct skill set. First you must be mindful and modify your leadership style according to the culture prevailing in that organization.

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